My Viewpoint on Alcohol

I have issues with alcohol. Not that I am a drunkard, I dont touch the stuff generally. If I do, its the occasional Irish Coffee, or Cape Velvet Liqueur. In my opinion, in most cases alcoholic beverages just plain well taste gross. I’ve tasted beer, and wine, and even whiskey, but every time I do I want to spit it out! I prefer the taste on alcohol free champagne to the regular stuff, I’ve compared them and didn’t like the “real thing”.

But the biggest thing that turns me off of alcohol is what it does to people. It makes people blubbering idiots or plain well nasty and cruel. I have seen people drunk and passed out on the side of the road. I have seen drunken men beating their wives and children. I have seen alcohol make people drive like idiots (but then again cell phone drivers are sometimes worse than drunk drivers….), drunk people do stupid things and take stupid risks. I can never condone that. And the worst is that people who get drunk always, without fail, believe that the alcohol does nothing bad to them and that they are unaffected by it.

The biggest and most disgusting memory I have of drunk people however is from when I was about 11 years old. No 11 year old should see their own grandparents (or parents for that matter, but I am lucky as my parents share my disgust of drunkardness) get so inebriated that they do such stupid things and certainly it is a hugely reprehensible thing for any grandparent or parent to require their own little ones to constantly be refilling their glasses!

It was a December, I remember it clear as yesterday. We were living in a house with my dad’s parents, and my mom’s parents were visiting for a couple of weeks.

From before supper was made, the 4 grandparents were sitting in the lounge having glasses of wine, constantly calling me to refill their glasses from the cheap box wine. My dad was working, mom making supper, so I was the inevitable choice as the grandparents were too busy chatting to fill up their own glasses. They were emptying those glasses fast and furious.

We had supper, the one grandmother was particularly fond of olives so there was a jar of olives on the table. I think the supper was pork fillet. By the time supper was finished and we were dishing up ice cream for desert, they were already half way through the second box of wine. And that was when the downright stupidity came in.

There had already been some rather crude jokes flying around the table. But then when it was desert time, and the table was mostly cleared of supper (except a few condiments) and the ice cream brought out. The grandparents all being hopelessly tipsy, dished up ice cream and then decided to top it with olives. As revolting as that was, the biggest shocker to my young mind was that not one of the grandparents remembered it the next day, and to this day they deny it ever happened.

I have seen many inebriated people, never has it looked enticing or sophisticated to be drunk. It is horrific, and yet the person who is drunk is not even aware of how stupid they are.

So personally, I choose not to drink, other than the once every five years or so small glass of liqueur. I also choose not to associate with people who are drinking and if a bottle of wine or a keg of beer comes out, more often than not I will excuse myself from the company. Not because I think I’m better than you but rather because I dont like you when you are under the influence..

If you are reading this, I hope to high heavens and back again that you never allow yourself to either become dependent on alcohol (being dependent does not always mean you are drunk, but if you cannot live without it that is when you should go without it), become drunk, or even associate with drunkards.